At Those Who Can See, we recently postulated that in
a Euro society, Afros on average need stronger social controls than
other groups in order to conform to Euro behavioral norms. Where
these controls are tightest, such as a slavery system, black criminality
will be lowest; and where such controls are loosest, black criminality
will be very high. We also hypothesized that when a new freedom or right is obtained by Afros, a statistically significant percentage of them will 'act out' in response, in ways that include antisocial and criminal behavior.

We suggested four such periods in U.S. history in which to test our hypothesis:

(4) the period following Barack Obama's inauguration as first Afro president of the U.S.

Last time, we examined (2),
the change in crime statistics before and after the Civil Rights era of
the 1960s. Today, we shall look at period (1), the South
post-Emancipation.

This is the most delicate of
questions, as human bondage, while common throughout history, is seen
with strong revulsion today in the West. Is it to be expected that he
who moves from slavery to freedom will lash out in violence at his past
oppressors? The more optimistic writers of the time, Black as well as
White, believed the freed slave would quickly use his liberty to educate
himself and lead a productive, civilized existence alongside 'the
superior race.' The more pessimistic thought emancipation of Afros
could only lead to chaos.

Empirical
data on the question is tricky to come by, for a variety of reasons.
And it is important to distinguish Reconstruction from the period
following it. The years 1865-1876 were topsy-turvy for all the South,
under military occupation and with illiterate Afros being shoehorned by
the occupiers into State Houses and judgeships. Things didn't return to
'normal' until the late 1870s, and the men quoted below are mainly
referring to the period beginning then. We shall start with their
observations, then move on to the statistics.

Post-Reconstruction
era writings are rife with anecdotes of high black crime, from both
Southern authors and visitors to the South. W.E.B. DuBois, 1899:

Throughout the land there has been
since the war [between the states] a large increase in crime, especially
in cities. ... The Negro began to rush to the cities in large numbers
after 1880, and consequently the phenomena attendant on that momentous
change of life are tardier in his case. His rate of criminality has in
the last two decades risen rapidly...(1)

It
does, indeed, seem that a great part of the Negroes almost ran wild for
they were free, but did not understand how to use their freedom. So, lazy, worthless, robbing, murdering gangs of them went prowling through the South. (2)

Freedom
[...] has combined with the influence of the press in popularizing
crime, and perhaps with an innate African savagery, to make the black criminal a terrible scourge in the South.

Not
so genial is the usual relation of Negro with Negro; both in town and
city there is an amount of crude and savage violence of which the
outside world knows little, and in which women freely engage. ...
Practically every negro man carries a revolver and many of them bear
knives or razors; hence, once engaged in a fracas, nobody knows what
will happen. ... There is constant negro violence against the Whites, and they occasionally engage in pitched battles with white gangs. (3)

Along, however, with the industrial progress of the negro, went an enormous increase in the amount of crime,
which Governor Alcorn [of Mississippi] thought showed a "degree of
barbarism truly shocking." Much of this Governor Alcorn attributed to
the "barbarous practice" of carrying deadly weapons, which was almost
universal among both races in the South at this time. (4)

Violent crime was said to be on the rise, but becoming even more widespread was theft:

The
sudden emancipation of the slave population, and the too generous
course of the government in furnishing them with the means of
subsistence during their idleness, [...] The freedman was made to believe that liberty meant license, that
as he had been freed from slavery by a powerful government, he would
also be clothed and fed by it whether he chose to labor or not. ...As a
result, the freedmen left the plantations and moved to the towns or
military camps, refusing to make contracts or to fulfil them when made. The amount of robbery and larceny was alarming.
The farmer's swine were stolen for pork, his cows were penned in the
woods and milked, and his barns and cotton houses were broken open. (4)

Garner also notes:

Cotton
stealing was so prevalent that the [Mississippi] legislature passed an
act at this session making it unlawful in some counties to send cotton
to market except in bales, or to buy cotton after dark. If brought in
bags it was prima facie evidence of being stolen cotton. Other measures
were provided for checking the crime. (4)

Garner explains the origins of the Kuklux Klan in Tennessee in 1866 as a reaction to Afros' new liberty:

The nocturnal perambulations of the freedmen, their habit of running away from labor contracts, the large amount of petit larceny among them at this time,
the abandonment of their crops to attend political meetings, their
participation in the loyal leagues [Union-founded political groups], and
their alleged insolence to former masters created a necessity for some kind of restraint, as the whites believed. The Kuklux organization was designed to accomplish this purpose. (4)

For British journalist William Archer, who took a trip through the American South in 1909, one fear was evoked again and again:

Here,
then, I was face to face with the most hideous factor in the problem —
that which keeps popular sentiment in the South chronically inflamed and
exasperated. Again and again, at every turn, I came upon it ; not only
in the shape of revolting stories, but in accounts of the constant and most burdensome precautions which the state of affairs imposes. (5)

The 'it' was black-on-white rape. As A.B. Hart put it,

The
negro crime about which Southern newspapers print most, Southern
writers say most, and which more than anything else aggravates race
hatred, is violence to white women. Statistics are unfortunately
too available, inasmuch as for twenty years the number of such crimes
has been nearly balanced by the number of lynchings for that offense,
... From 1882 to 1903 these statistics show an average of thirty-two
lynchings per year for violence or attempted violence to white women,
though of late [1910] they have been reduced to under twenty. [...] to
this day one often hears it said: "Lynchings never occur except for the one crime." (3)

It is a fact, which no one will deny, that the crime of rape was substantially unknown during the period of slavery,
and was hardly known during the first years of freedom: it is the fatal
product of new conditions. Twenty-five years ago [late 1870s] women in
the South went unattended, with no more fear of attack than they have in
New England. To-day, no woman in the South goes alone upon the highway out
of sight of white men, except on necessity, and no man leaves his women
alone in his house if he can help it. Over 500 white women and children
have been assaulted in the South by Negroes within that time. (6)

Archer, the British journalist, collected a variety of anecdotes on the subject during his travels through the South:

In
a population about evenly divided in North Carolina was a family of
unpretending intelligent people. There was a school house only a mile
and a half away, but they could not let their two daughters go to it.
They could not let them stir away from home unprotected. They had to
pay for their education at home, while at the same time they were being
taxed for the education of the Negro children of the district. ' 'Do you
think,' was asked a leading Negro educator, 'that those girls could
safely have gone to school?'

'It would depend upon the
district,' was the reply. 'In some districts the girls could have gone
to school safely enough; in others, no.' This I think was a terrible
admission. (5)

An acquaintance relates the situation in his home state of Louisiana:

'I
have two sisters married there. The husband of one of them never dares
to leave his home unless he takes his wife with him. The husband of the
other is compelled to leave home for days at a time ; but he keeps a
loaded shot-gun in every room in the house, and he has made his wife
practice till she is a very fair shot, both with gun and revolver. There isn't a white man in the country districts that doesn't take similar precautions.' (5)

Some
Southerners felt the freed slaves who'd grown up in the old system
retained a work ethic and a dignified character that the 'new
generation' (which came of age in the 1880s and 1890s), free of the old
constraints, did not. T.N. Page, scion of an old plantation family who
admittedly held a great nostalgia for the Old South, says:

This
proposition is borne out also by the testimony of the great majority of
the Southern whites who live in constant touch with the blacks; who
have known them in every relation of life in a way that no one who has
not lived among them can know them.

Universally, they will tell you that while the old-time Negroes were industrious, saving,
and, when not misled, well-behaved, kindly, respectful, and
self-respecting, and while the remnant of them who remain still retain
generally these characteristics, the "new issue," for the most part, are lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality.

They
unite further in the opinion that education such as they receive in the
public schools, so far from appearing to uplift them, appears to be
without any appreciable beneficial effect upon their morals or their
standing as citizens. But more than this; universally, they report a general depravity and retrogression of the Negroes at large in sections [regions] in which they are left to themselves, closely resembling a reversion to barbarism. (6)

It is difficult to compare Afro crime statistics in the South from before and after the Civil War. W.D. Weatherford explains:

[Contemporaries]
point to the record of the Negro during slavery, maintaining that few
Negroes were criminals during that period. While the facts are not
widely known there was, on the contrary, considerable criminality among
slaves. The records do not show nearly all the crimes of the period, for
all minor and many major offenses were dealt with by the master and never came to the attention of the courts. ... Under such conditions most masters [...] summarily dispensed "justice" as it seemed wise and expedient. (7)

We cannot insist strongly enough, then, that the following graphs are not meant to give a precise picture of black criminality in the South pre- and post-Emancipation. We simply offer them as an empirical counterpiece to the anecdotes related above, with appropriate caveats in mind:

Most slave crimes never went through the court system, so pre-1865
numbers will be very low no matter what the real Afro crime level was.

We have data back to 1840 for some states, 1850 for others. In
1860, unhappily, no racial data was gathered on the question. (Our
graphs thus jump from 1850 to 1870.)

Pre-1865 numbers include free Blacks as well as slaves.

'Prisoners per 100,000 of the population' means per that racial group in the population. 'Blacks 133' = 'for every 100,000 Blacks in the population that year, 133 are in prison.'

Prisoners per 100,000 of the population, pre- and post-
Emancipation, in the states of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Maryland, Kentucky, and Virginia

The strong dip in prisoner numbers seen in 1904 holds true all across the country, as seen here. We are unsure of the cause.

Globally, a smaller difference between black and white incarceration
rates in the 'deep south' states than in the border states. On a
national level, black prison rates were in fact highest not in the South
but in the Midwest and West.

From Reconstruction onwards, we see a trendline that appears, at
first glance, to largely coalesce with the narratives presented above.
More data is needed to draw firm conclusions.

* * *

In 1910 the Scottish journalist Archer, fresh from his travels through the American South, recounts:

''During
the war," a very intelligent coloured man said to me, " the planters'
wives and children were left to the protection of the negroes. Not a single case of outrage [rape] occurred, and scarcely a case of theft or breach of trust. Had
we been the lecherous brutes we are now supposed to be, we should have
written the darkest page in history, and brought the Southern armies
home to the defence of their own hearthstones."

That
is true. It is admitted on every hand that the conduct of the slaves
during the war was, on the whole, excellent, ...But what matters the
admission that tho malignant and bestial negro did not exist forty years
ago, if it has to be admitted in the same breath that he exists to-day ?

What has bred him ? Who is responsible for his existence ? (5)

This
question was asked again and again at the turn of the 20th century.
Why does the criminality of southern Afros seem to have jumped since the
War? Some argued the move towards the cities, which augments criminal
behavior in every race, was the culprit. Others said that white
southern governments hadn't spent nearly enough money on educating black
youth properly, and this contributed to delinquency. Still others, whom
we have quoted at length, saw in the childlike Negro a force of nature in need of control and guidance.

Former
slave Tempe Herndon Durham, in an interview given in the 1930s near the
end of her life, had this to say about Emancipation (spelling adjusted
for readability):

'Freedom is all right, but the niggers was better off before surrender, 'cause then they was looked after and they didn't get in no trouble fighting and killing like they do these days.
If a nigger cut up and got sassy in slavery times, his Ole Master gave
him a good whipping and he went way back and sat down and behaved
himself. If he was sick, Master and Missus looked after him, and if he
needed store medicine, it was bought and given to him; he didn't have to
pay nothing. They didn't even have to think about clothes nor nothing
like that, they was woven and made and given to them. Maybe everybody's
Master and Missus wasn't good as Master George and Missus Betsy, but
they was the same as a mammy and pappy to us niggers.'--North Carolina Slave Narratives

“I cannot remember more than two instances out of this large
number [of my freed slaves], in which it did not appear that the
freedom I earnestly sought for them was their ruin. It has been so with a
very large proportion of all others I have known emancipated.”

These
anecdotes are not presented in a spirit of mockery, but rather in an
earnest effort to inform our policy-makers of what they once knew but
have long forgotten: On North American soil live two peoples of vastly
different evolutionary history, temperament, and cognitive ability. The most eminent thinkers
of every age but ours have taken it as an evidence. It is a foolish or a
superstitious era indeed which prefers to build exquisite 'clever sillies'
rather than to look biological reality in the face. Our ancestors would
likely not know what to make of the house of cards we've built under
ourselves, other than to hope it falls quickly so we may come back to a
more sensible foundation.

10 comments:

bjdubbs
said...

It seems like the one true taboo these days is colonialism. Everybody desperately wants some form of colonialism, including the NGOs, the foundations, the neocons and imperialists, and the charter-city economists, but nobody actually demands honest colonialism (or paternalism is a better word, I suppose), they call it something else. If we define a taboo as something that a) everybody wants and b) nobody can admit to, then colonialism is the biggest taboo today. Notice that US blacks have never really embraced black nationalism, there is no black equivalent of Utah, and the Liberia experiment never got very far. Washington DC is the closest thing to a black-run city that isn't within a larger white-run state, but the Chocolate City is a swamp, and it's not even black majority these days. I've also noticed that often the loudest and most politically demanding blacks tend to be mixed-race. It's almost as though, as half white, there is a fear of abandonment: "Don't you know that we're related? Don't leave us out here all alone!" The coloreds in South Africa, for instance, side politically with the whites, not with the black majority. Isn't paternalism in fact the Obama platform? "We're all in this together" is really "We're all part of the same family, so please take care of your half-brothers (who can't help themselves, but don't tell them I said that)." Obama isn't an Kenyan anti-colonialist, he's a North American pro-paternalist.

Just an ill formed thought from the piece:Its being said these days that race is a cultural or social construct. This is demonstrably false because cultural and social institutions can't exist without people to form them. People who are necessarily of one race or the other. But if you point out a racial characteristic or stereotype, people can point out a dozen counter examples of the top of their heads. I think the problem is that the concept of race has been dumbed down to just black, white, brown, red and yellow lumping many different subgroups who have different cultures and characteristics. The Irish and English are a classic example. Both white, but demonstrably different in culture. In Africa, there are many different groups also with their somewhat different temperaments and characteristics. While the Irish and English are more like each other than they are any African group, they are themselves distinct from each other as are the San from the Hutu.

Definitely. I think of it as the 'more able' and the 'less able.' The former tend to dominate the latter no matter what, even when they're not trying to. The 'charter city' thing, as you point out, is just a semantic game to try to get around this reality. But as the French say, 'Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop,', that is, try to shove reality out the door and it'll come right back in the window.

There is no black equivalent of Utah.

The wisest Afros know that maintaining the comfortable standard of living they enjoy here means staying in close proximity to Euros.

The coloreds in South Africa, for instance, side politically with the whites, not with the black majority.

The dynamic of Afros/Mulattoes/Euros is endlessly interesting to me. Of course in the U.S. no one speaks in such sensible terms, you're 'black' or 'white,' with no in-between. I always bang the drum on E.B. Reuter's 'The Mulatto in the United States' (1919), but it's the most interesting and honest thing I've ever read on the subject. According to him, 'The Mulatto is the key to the race problem in America.'

people can point out a dozen counter-examples off the top of their heads

No exception disproves a rule. Otherwise the average Chinese man would be 7'6", because after all Yao Ming is.

the concept of race has been dumbed down

Placing something in a broad category is not 'dumbing it down.' There are situations where it's useful to talk about 'Martians and Earthlings,' others where it's useful to talk about 'Bovines and Humans,' or 'Africans and Europeans,' or 'Slavs and Teutonics,' or 'Bavarians and Scottish,' or 'Scottish lowlanders and Scottish highlanders,' or 'Scottish highlanders from the McIntyre clan and Scottish highlanders from the McGregor clan.' The fact that you're a Scottish highlander from the McGregor clan doesn't make you any less a Scot, a Teutonic, a European, a Human, or an Earthling.

That said, the vocabulary around the issue has become confusing. A hundred years ago authors spoke of 'the Polish race,' 'the Italian race.' Today 'ethnicity' seems to be more in vogue for this category. But trying to discuss something as complicated as race/ethnicity with someone incapable of even recognizing the existence of group averages is probably time wasted. (Though if you just really enjoy debating, it can be fun.)

We need to divest the Orwellian concept of Diversity from true diversity.

Yes, one more example of twisting the plain meaning of words, in the good old leftist tradition. ("the People's Democratic Popular Republic of...") The blank slatist is a kind of Alice in Wonderland, who can believe six impossible things before breakfast, for example that a taco stand and a curry shop on every corner is (1) an absolute good and (2) entails no price whatsoever to society.

Jeanelle Antas had a good piece on this at Alternative Right, 'Immigration and Boutique Multiculturalism.' For someone as proud as he is of his intellectual prowess, the average progressive has thought about this subject about as deeply as a three-year-old.

While engaged in partying, orgies and drinking, otherwise known as studying in an American university, on my way to yet another party at a frat house I had to pass through the hallways of a humongous library.

The gigantic hallway on the ground floor of the student library had two rows of tables, for those wishing to read books there and/or study.

And every saturday, without fail, the Asian students - read, Chinese - were there, studying. To be fair, it was a 50-50 studying/social occasion, but they were there.

This got me thinking (on my way there, I was stone cold sober, it took me until my junior year... I never was the smart one in the family) - different people on this planet are different, and there are noticeable traits - racial, mainly, but national, also - which are easy to spot and self evident.

Now, as I grew older (and more sober - alcohol these days is expensive), I read the Steve Sailer blog, and I happened upon the mention of HBD.

HBD is code word for racists to claim that that different races are different and that there are differences.

Now, not being smart, I could not figure out whether it is due to genes or a a culture of how kids are raised from little tykes to being adults.

The thing is, it does not seem important, whether it is nature or nurture.

The MAIN thing is to recognize that there ARE self evident differences.

Of course, in America, going against the media blitz of "Et Pluribus Unus" and "I am an American" and the (without fail, no exceptions) every commercial on TV showing a ditzy, clueless, pathetic White man, an attractive White babe, longingly looking at a wise, condescending, professional, sometimes superhuman black man (example - families are worrying about when to start saving for college for their 5 year old kids - and which family proudly states that they already started to save $. Quiz Time: Was it the Chinese family, the White pair or the black pair? Sometimes it's subtle - FYI, you should go to youtube and see some of the American commercials on our TV over here, it's really in your face stuff).

So, to get back to my lost plot - the main thing is to notice that there are differences between races, different national groups (even in "same" race, for example, the European Bosphorus Turks vs. the Asian-al Kaida Turks or the italians north vs. south).

Failing to see that there are differences (IQ, behaviour, mannerisms, work ethic, as well as superficial things which are really not that important, like skin colour) leads to gigantic, I would say insurmountable problems for a society.

Despite their cultural differences, different faiths (differing sects of Christianity), even different skin colours (come on - compare a REAL Greek vs. a REAL Nordic type, not talking about modern prototypes like the super italian Balotelli), they all, well, melted. The groups kept the best of their traditions (cooking, Christmas, family, faith) and for the most part lost the worst (WW1 type nationalism, cronyism).

All adopted to the Anglo Saxon - nay, Puritan work ethic of the new country.

When the immigration turned non-White, and when the blacks became a major force in politics, that's when the system broke down.

Same in Europe, with arabs' ghettoes.

We suddenly had LARGE groups that were insular, hated the society they were in and, worse, the society coddled them, and for every criminal act they did, for every outburst, they got more goodies.

Similar to a kid who is acts out in a supermarket, making a scene, even hitting his mother - and as a reward, to shut him up, mom buys him yet another computer game to shut him up...

"Afros on average need stronger social controls than other groups in order to conform to Euro behavioral norms."

Very, very true.

Or rather, no s**t.

There was a slew of films in America back a few years ago, in which Hollywood showed how to solve the problem of unruly (read - thuggish and murderous) urban (read - black and latino) kids.

The most famous example are "Lean on me" and "Stand and deliver".

Both profiled how to resolve it - i.e., a STRONG father figure (not necessarily strong in a physical sense, but a strong personality and persona) takes over a class or a school and, first, gets the kids to respect him and then to inspire them.

Hollywood showed the way - but alas, our bureaucracy is too entrenched, there can be NO strong men in a school who would brook no bullsh*t (the schools would get sued by irate parents protesting that their angelic kids would never, ever do such things, and after all it is the fault of the school anyway - now give me US$5 million).

And, of course, America (just like Europe) cannot, CANNOT show that there are ANY differences between Chinese, african, Europeans, Jews, and now even men and women.

To do so would make the whole politically correct house of cards go down.

That is why, to me, it does not matter whether it is nature or nurture, genes or upbringing, or something in the water.

The main thing is to finally give vent to common sense, say that, yes, Chinese students do study a whole lot more than others, blacks are more aggressive and need a stronger hand than, say, Chinese students, and move on from there.

And finally make sane policies in schools, in education, in scholarships (the racism in scholarships is breath taking - universities here almost kill to get a qualifying black student while an Asian or White student with much higher grades and accomplishments is passed over), in job training, in workplaces.

I think that what could save this country is something that Germany has implemented, except with a choice by a student...

Namely, two (or more) career tracks - namely, one "intellectual" (university, leading into business, banks, scientists, lawyers, basically office work) and the other one track would be "practical" (plumbers, car repair mechanics, carpenters, factory workers).

This bullsh**t fixation on physical labour being for losers and only a silly paper from a university being "worth it" must be obsoleted.

In Germany, a person who graduated from a trade school with a trade is just as much proud of his schooling, his chosen career and of the work he/she is doing as the person who graduated a university and is on his/her way to become a doctor.

After all, we need doctors, but we also need plumbers, mechanics, farmers, repairmen and factory workers also.

That would, of course, require an immediate STOP to immigration (at least of the mexican kind - in Chicago, a land locked, very far away city from Mexico, every 3rd car is driven by a mexican person - you can imagine Texas and other border states, what the situation is there).

Speaking of generalities, mexicans took the jobs from blacks, because blacks prefer to not work and be on the dole.

Of course, my practical and common sense solution will NEVER be implemented - too many interests are against it.

Big business likes outsourcing and insourcing to lower the wages, the Jews like multiculturalism (in a given European country, Jews were very noticeable as the ones on top, and in 1930's it led to some very unhappy happenings, but in a multicultural society the lower strata fight like dogs for scraps at the bottom) and they have the money to influence both parties, as well as the media, which influence cannot be ever overstated.

Money now rules politics without any camouflage whatsoever, after the Citizens United Supreme Court rulings, so foreign countries, big business and out of control banking calls the shots in our, eh, "democracy".

So, the topic of differences between different peoples is taboo, and ever shall be, and it will be multiculturalism until we live in a "Mad Max" movie (which, in many American cities - Detroit, St. Louis, south side Chicago, Alabama) is already a reality.

American Goy--Failing to see that there are differences (IQ, behaviour, mannerisms, work ethic, as well as superficial things which are really not that important, like skin colour) leads to gigantic, I would say insurmountable problems for a society.

Good post, and this here is really the problem in a nutshell. Well said. I really think historians in the future will look back at this time the same way we look back at the witch trials or early Soviet indoctrination. A kind of folie à plusieurs, or mass mania. The most ironic part is that it's those who consider themselves intellectuals, 'free thinkers,' 'skeptics,' 'science-lovers,' etc. who are the most thoroughly indoctrinated. There must be a connection there.

This bullsh**t fixation on physical labour being for losers and only a silly paper from a university being "worth it" must be obsoleted.

This is a huge problem, maybe a symptom of the extreme level of wealth we've reached (historically speaking). Even the poorest among us have not only clean running water, electricty, and more than enough to eat, but also a variety of gadgets and geegaws that the artistocracy of yesterday would have drooled over. Also, our 'rags to riches' national myth keeps us very aspirational. They used to say 'three generations off the farm or out of the factory, and you lose all touch with reality.' I wonder if there is something to that.

Money now rules politics without any camouflage whatsoever, after the Citizens United Supreme Court rulings, so foreign countries, big business and out of control banking calls the shots in our, eh, "democracy".

Most definitely. Will Durant said 'Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction.' Of course the Greeks knew 2500 years ago that democracy was not a tenable system long-term. How sad that the U.S. has long since ceased being anything its founders would find even vaguely familiar.